Polar Expo 2016

The Saigon heat has been unforgiving lately and I could hear our aircon at home complaining that it’s getting overworked this summer. To escape the heat, we decided to check out the Polar Expo 2016 happening just outside Vietopia. Again, big thanks to Lidia for letting us know about this!

This is open from April 14, 2016 till February 28, 2017. Yup! Till next year! So there’s plenty of time to visit. Their operating hours is from 9 am till 8:30 pm.

The ticket price is 180,000 VND per person, whether you’re an adult or child and 210,000 VND on a Sunday and holidays. But, here’s the clincher, they have a promo ongoing when you buy your ticket at Vietopia. You only pay half. So yup, we got in for 90,000 VND each.

But to avail of the big discount up to April 29 only, you have to go to Vietopia’s Facebook page. Like their post about their 2nd birthday and share the post with the words “Happy Birthday Vietopia #happybirthdayvietopia”. So there, just show you did that and you can get 50% off.

I’d say go there early as the jackets are still new and clean. 😛 The ticket price includes jacket rent. You can pay for gloves at 10,000 VND for kids and 15,000 VND for adults. But if you can bring a face mask, all the better. My face froze without one. They should sell face mask really.

Going to Polar Expo has reminded me why I’m Filipino. I can’t stand the cold. As in, I can’t! I cannot migrate to colder countries for sure. I will die.

There were lots of icescapes and a place where you can throw “snow” but seriously, my hands were frozen. I was having a difficult time taking photos. And our kasambahay had to run out and buy me gloves. I thought I could withstand the cold but sadly, I cannot.

I’ve been to places like this before but it wasn’t this cold. Then I read the article that said that the temperature is 15 degrees below zero Celsius. No wonder I was dying.

I really thought we’d stay here for a couple of hours. But I was just like 1 minute in and I wanted to get out because of the cold. But that’s just me, okay?

Gigi’s kids and my kids were all incredibly happy. Wet bums and all!

The place has 11 scenes and there were lots of guides around.

It would be nice to have a photobooth inside where you can pose and have one printed as you go out the expo or at least you can send to your email.

There was an Ice Bar but in the cold? Nobody really wanted to buy anything. My chewing gum froze here.

I wanted to try this huge slide. But as soon as I sat on the mat, I chickened out. The kids couldn’t get enough of this though.

Here’s more scenes inside —

The ice sculpture were really nice! I can’t imagine the work put in to make all these!

If you’re going to stay long in this place, I suggest you wear gloves so you can enjoy playing with “snow” and wear a face mask. Gigi’s son had a cold burn on his fingers.

And please, don’t wear shorts and sandals in this place. I wore jeans and I could have used leggings underneath too.

It would be great too if the outer area has air conditioner to help our bodies adjust back to normal temperature. As it was, there wasn’t any and we were worried that the kids would get sick coming out of -15C and back to Saigon’s 37C.